I taught two law school classes this past semester: “Delivering Legal Services” at Michigan State University College of Law and a brand new courses called “Legal Technology Literacy and Leadership” at the University of Michigan Law School. To put it mildly, the pandemic presented some challenges for both classes, but the students impressed me with their effort, persistence, resilience, and creativity.
I have finished reading and grading their final papers and, wow, was I impressed. Even without the challenges, their work was so good – well beyond my expectations.
I want to help these students, whose immediate career plans have been thrown way off track, and find ways to share these papers with the legal tech and legal innovation world.
I have a few ideas, but I want to reach out to the legal publishing world. If you are a publisher of law-related articles who who be interested in publishing some of these papers, please reach out to me and I can get you information and introductions.
Even if you aren’t a publisher, you’ll want to read through the paper topics to see the creativity and sophistication that these students brought to their final papers.
Legal Technology Literacy and Leadership (Michigan)
The assignment in this class was to identify a technology or innovation that the student thought was important and show their understanding of the implications in law, with the idea of illustrating how the student might leverage tech and innovation into leadership roles.
The student papers cover:
- Intersection of Tech and Disability Rights
- Contact Tracing Implications for Black Communities
- Managing and Assessing Remote Working Attorneys
- New Competition for Traditional BigLaw
- SupTech (Supervisory Technologies) for Regulators
- Approaches for Increasing Arbitration Efficiency for In-house Law Departments
- Facilitation of E-Litigation in Japan
- NewLaw & The Future of theLegal Profession
- Virtual Data Rooms and Their Impact on Mergers and Acquisitions
- Early Learnings from Covid-19’s Impact on Litigation and the Legal Workplace
- Strategic Technology Plans for NGOs
- The Uses and Challenges of Adopting AI and Legal Tech Tools Within In-House Departments
- Blockchain and the Legal Industry
- The Future of Algorithms in Probable Cause
Delivering Legal Services (Michigan State)
In this class, the students come up with ideas for a new legal (or law-related) service and develop the ideas into a plan for offering the new service, including integration of process improvement techniques. They do a pitch proposal and a paper presenting their business plan for the new service.
The student papers cover:
- Innovation/tech/efficiency consulting for mid-sized and large law firms
- Providing tenant legal services through an nonprofit organization
- Subscription-based legal service that helps small and large health care entities buy and sell health care practices
- Document automation tool for judges and court systems
- Targeted business law services for cannabis industry
- Parental rights resource center
- Targeted legal services for women provided by women
- Gamification and other online approaches applied to estate planning services
- Customizable juror selection app
- Online legal and related services for expectant mothers
- Cloud-based contract negotiation tool for in-house legal departments
- Inner city entrepreneurial legal and business assistance program
- AI-based contract analytics tools
I think that you will agree that these students more than rose to the challenges of this semester and the great uncertainty that they face in their current situations. There’s so much creative talent in these students.
Please help me get the word out about their ideas and their work. You can email me here.
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[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (https://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]
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